On Tantra

the quickening eulogy

opening

No doubt. Now is not the time to doubt.

It is starting now, it is happening right now. Exactly right now.

If you doubt it, you will lose it.

Do not doubt, because you have a sense of it.

A sense of the right and the left.

A sense of the balance

and imbalance

in things.

Of things.

It is right now, and you must do

whatever it is

that you are meant to be doing

right now.

Because they are watching you.

And so am I.

intention

For this work, I fully go for refuge. I have taken refuge many times, even officially once. I took refuge in the tradition of my teacher, and the name by which that love called me was 'Fortunate Tara'. I took the four-armed Avalokitesvara initiation, and was supported by Vajrasattva at the time I took refuge.

Today, I go for refuge. I am not taking it passively from another. Today I actively go to refuge, I seek it out with every bit of my being.

I go for refuge to the embodiment of the enlightened mind, the Buddha. Every person has the capacity for awakening of the enlightened mind, including myself. It is to this I go for refuge.

I go for refuge to the wisdom of the path, to the knowledge that has been hidden and revealed in this world that allows me and other enlightened minds to navigate the journey in the most skillful way possible.

I go for refuge to the community of like-minded beings, no matter where I meet them or how they appear. I go to refuge of the sangha because I am not alone on this journey, though I am the only one that can walk my path.

I go for refuge in these things, I continually aspire to the sweet refuge of these life-giving things, because I am seeking to embody the awakened mind. I will continue to seek refuge in these things so that my journey will be ever quickening, so that I may ever more effectively enable the awakening of all beings everywhere.

In this state of intentional body and mind, my aspiration for this particular writing is to represent as precisely as I can to my listeners and observer my experience of these topics. The purpose of this document is to bring together these contextual influences in my life to more effectively nurture myself and my learning.

2.24.08

my oh my, you know it just don't stop

on and on, and on and on, what a day what a day what a day

and so it goes, and so it goes

I know why the black mother, I know why the writer's block. I know why the bones and the shifting veils of death, I know the window I've been looking at and why the curtains are parted. The gauzy white curtains that turn sharply or wave softly in the breeze. The shifting gold and oranges, browns and greens of the changing leaves. The drifts of snow that sparkle as diamond dust in the soft muted crunch of a nighttime parking lot. The window is open, I can smell the fresh air. The sunlight outside, the crisp nose invigorating smell of the season changing. I cannot see what is outside the window, but occasionally the curtain will flip or twitch or shudder and I will get a glimpse of it.

This window, I can crawl right through this window if I wanted to. If I wanted to, I could put my knee up on this sill that has been painted over white too many times. I can push aside these curtains that have been hanging in front of this window, these curtains which have been purple with moons and coyotes on them, have been geometric shades of expensive paper that softly whoosh when you move them and bang in the wind, have been old dirty sheets and torn hippie skirts, have been iron bars with no glass, have been many things. I can push these curtains aside and knee up, eyes wide as the breeze I've been feeling and the sounds I've been hearing and the thoughts I've been thinking and the heart I've been beating all sync up with what it looks like, my first long gaze into the place on the other side of the window. The vistas. The forests. The deep den places. The mountains. The marshes. The dangerous places. The places where things live. The place where the well is. The place where you just have to trust that you know what to do, and go ahead and do it.

It is the black mother who has reminded me of these places. She lives on the other side of the window all the time. She exists there to remind those who are looking that the window is open. And yes, it is big enough to crawl through, if you try. Come home, she says. I'm not saying it will be easy, but you can do it if you try. But don't come if you're not going to be on your toes, because this is no place for lazybones. Lazybones are good for chewing, out here.

And I try and try again to get through the window, to jump up or down or slide in to the other side. I keep getting disoriented, turned around about which side is which. I become confused, obscure, afraid. And finally, the black mother, who is terrifying by this time, all fire and rattling teeth and animal skins, reaches in her with her strong hands and grabs me by the hair and yanks. Suddenly and brutally, and I am through.

And it is bigger, and so much more exquisitely beautiful than I have ever imagined.

introduction

The importance and execution of the "critical" or "position" paper as a tool for education has varied tremendously by the structure of the educational philosophy or institution giving the assignment. In K-12 I practiced a very structured formula for the infamous "term paper":

- Write (or be given) a thesis statement / hypothesis

- Find at least three facts from three different sources that either confirm or contradict your thesis statement / hypothesis

- Make a conclusion that states whether your sources agreed or disagreed with your thesis / hypothesis and why

- Make a list of your sources

Over time, this model required more elaborate notation, longer page length, bigger and more sophisticated words, but basically remained the same through college. The most significant shift in college for me was learning how to write a position paper without actually using my voice (language that refers to me as the author, student, or idea-holder) at all. The task of that training was to completely eliminate my voice, and I succeeded very well.

In my graduate learning at Goddard College, I feel deep resistance to this standardized process, and I am not the only student who experiences this growing pain. Usually, students protest that they just can't write that much, they just don't know what they're supposed to do. Me, I know how to write a critical paper, and actually sometimes enjoy the process because it is so predictable and milquetoast. I am challenged now because the work of consciousness studies asks me to reintroduce my voice in an authoritative and almost cocky way with which I am completely unfamiliar. I have become so skilled at creating vapid position papers that present all sides of the argument successfully without actually putting a stake in the ground that I have forgotten what it is like to articulate my position. In every area of my life I am working to unlearn this terrible habit, an active intentional change that challenges tradition.

Today, the world is especially challenging for rapid change of thought and behavior, despite the staggering changes that technology renders in our minds and bodies. In general, change is and should be uncomfortable, because it requires transformation (and preferably growth). Many beings are hostile to this transformation because it makes them feel uncomfortable, which makes them feel scared, which causes them to act out of anger and fear.

Other people who actively and sometimes aggressively challenge their current contextual belief systems are often defined in our culture as odd or strange, eccentric but harmless, sometimes gentle genius, sometimes great thinker or scientist or artist. At the most threatening, these people are percieved and labeled as madmen and cult leaders; the language associated with strong beings in the margins of culture can be very frightening and polarizing. Change of thought is terrifying for most, and inherently challenging for all beings. Different cultural systems identify the impetus for this ongoing cyclic change in many ways: some call it original sin. Some call it alienation of self and other. Some call it many different things, and we are not concerned with the nuances of the naming of those things here.

The point I am making here is:

As a relatively young (aged 27 years) pale-skinned non-Hispanic white Caucasian female who was raised in a position of socio-economic and cultural privilege and am challenging a generally endorsed structure of oppression, I have had to sort through a lot of information to arrive at where I am.

The point I am making here is:

As a relatively old (aged 27 years) unmarried white girl who had a good raising but was cocky and got above her birthing, I had to seek a lot of grace before I could get to where I'm standing.

The point I am making here is:

As a timeless self-owned collection of skin and eyes and mouth and hands and ears and sex and voice and thoughts and emotions who has been raised in an evolutionary sensory environment that has stretched and toned this dynamic body-mind to be ready for anything, I have received many blessings and made many sacrifices to be here, sharing this moment with you.

Thank you, readers, for listening. Please forgive me where I am clumsy or as yet unrefined.

three breaths

Like most things in our contemporary culture that involve the body, the word "tantra" has been given carpet bags full of garbage connotations to carry around. Set aside all of your kama-sutra associations for a moment, and just think about your body. Breathe three times on purpose, and as you do, feel your body: where is your body touching other objects? Where do you feel tense? Where do you feel loose? What are your toes doing right now?

Exploring these kinds of questions as you (hopefully) just did is what tantra is about. It is about being fully present in your body, whatever your body happens to be doing at the time.

Everybody always wants to know: well, then what about the sex? Isn't tantra kinky sex? And here's the answer: sex is done with the body (surprise!). Tantra is also done with the body. You can have sex without practicing tantra, and you can practice tantra without having sex. Don't be too disappointed: tantra does help sex be better. And that's all we're going to say about sex, so take a deep breath and relax so you can really listen. In fact, take three breaths, and when you're ready you can move on.

tantra in context

Tantra and the knowledge of tantra is generally described as esoteric, meaning the teachings are secret. Even within different trantric structures of knowledge there are etic (obvious) meanings for symbols and emic (secret) meanings for these symbols. This sense of secrecy is part of what makes tantra so titillating for the modern United States consumer. In our culture, secrets are bad. Secrecy is not good or bad by itself ­ it is intention of the secrecy and the nature of the information that can be helpful or harmful.

Tantric knowledge has historically been disseminated through direct guru-student relationships, and cloaked in ornate metaphors and hierarchical lineages of power. The continuation of this lineage was very important for the organizational structures that supported the knowledge. Often, monasteries were seats of wealth, power, and politic that had a vested interest in controlling the lineage.

There was another reason for this secrecy: protection of the student. Practicing tantra can be very difficult, because it exposes the structures in our organisms that we have hidden from ourselves. The secrecy of direct transmission and the emphasis on the guru-student relationship in these lineages is important, because it protects the student from attempting practices that may be dangerous or harmful for them.

I practice mindfulness. In my current cultural context that I share with the people around me, I see a world of confusion and hurt. A desperate need to not pay attention, because it is all so very hurtful to look at. I know this because I see these behaviors, structures and coping mechanisms in my own behavior. In some ways, it has been very painful to examine the sources of those behaviors and skillfully destroy, sustain, or create new behaviors in their stead. Meditation causes us to look at all the parts of ourselves that we conceal, that we cover, that we shamefully tuck under the rug. It is important to have strong healthy relationships and clear guidance when navigating this path.

We live in a context that is very different from what is thought to be the typical "sources" of tantric learning. We have the old texts, the archaic structure that has been painstakingly handed down in many forms from many different cultures. It is sad because these are crumbling structures, and in looking at the old sources it is often easy to misunderstand or misinterpret the meanings and intention of the symbols. It is astonishing that any of this information has survived at all.

Tantra teaches you about being mindful of your body. You can find sources of tantric learning everywhere, but your own context will influence the symbols, experiences, and actions that your practice takes. In my life, I am coming to see it as the queen's path. For me, it is different than the hero's journey because it is behind the scenes. Following this path is like tracking something in the forest. You see a broken twig, you get a breath of wind, you narrow your eyes and you go, quietly.

My purpose in this writing is to explore the notion that the knowing of tantra is an open secret. It is difficult to capture in language because it is something that belongs to an individual body, and each person's experience of tantra will be different. Practicing tantra is like trying to describe the sky ­ we may call it blue, we may generally agree it is above our heads, we may speculate on the rain or the shapes of clouds. The quality of our experience of the sky can differ dramatically, however, because our sensory organs and construction of the consciousness of the moment are unique.

buddhist tantra

One of the ways I can describe how I understand the practice of tantra is to use the language of Tibetan Buddhism. This is one of the acknowledged lineages in our modern context as a source of purity or clarity of the teachings. My first bodily reaction to Buddhism as a teaching was surprisingly visceral and negative, the result of bad language translation. I had been studying Taoism for several years, and my Taoism teacher was as inexperienced as I. She sure was pretty, though.

During my undergrad at Antioch College, a professor offered a survey of "Eastern" religions, and so I took the class. That semester, my relationship with my Taoism teacher was disintegrating, and I was grasping at anything to keep my head above the water. I almost quit school and climbed on a tour bus. And then my professor told me that the first noble truth was that "all life is suffering."

I think I wrote a paper about why I believed that wasn't true. I remember it made me feel hostile toward Buddhism, I so deeply and bodily disagreed with that statement. I myself was suffering tremendously every day ­ too little sleep, too many drugs, plenty of strangers, no one who listened.

"That's not true. There's a lot of joy in life," I said. I started to wonder why I was suffering so badly. I examined my context, I thought about how I felt, and then I looked for signs. And then I made a choice not to suffer in that way any more.

Buddhism and I really met when I transferred to New College of Florida. I learned a lot. Buddhism is great for me, and Buddhism is correct for me because the heart of it teaches compassion for other sentient beings. Compassion, bodhicitta, is what helps you to remember to be human in the face of temptation. Human rebirth is so precious, so full of agility and discriminating awareness, and yet you may be tempted to use this gift for selfish unskillful gains. You may be tempted to kill yourself at an inappropriate time. You may be tempted to go live in a cave and to never re-enter the world, or you may be tempted to drown in the world and never return to your home. Bodhicitta is a lighthouse in a terrific storm.

Practicing compassion has been for me a beautiful way of finding my path to tantra. Compassion is such a unique human emotion, so subtle and complex, and it results in a tremendous spectrum of action. Righteousness and loyalty are like this, as well. Passionate love is like this as well. Sadness is like this as well. There are many shades and hues, many different levels of intensity.

Buddhism developed as a cult response to Hinduism, which had formed its own kinds of degradations of lineage in India. The historical Buddha Sakyamuni experienced disillusionment with the indulgence / asceticism of the prince / ascetic roles he had been offered in his cultural context, and so determined that wisdom was found in the middle of the path. Whatever the extremes of your existence, you will suffer least in the very middle of the path. Enlightenment is the ability to clearly recognize your context and to act skillfully regardless of your circumstances.

In Tibetan Buddhism, tantra is of the vajrayana, the diamond vehicle. The adamantine path, the sharpest and brightest and quickest and clearest and hardest. This path will wake you up, but you will be rode hard and put up wet. It will get you there and you will have a story to tell, but nothing in the world will save you if you crash this bike. If you fuck up moving this fast, it will be a long time before you're going to walk again.

You don't have to know a thing about Tibetan Buddhism to know that these teachings are serious ­ a glance at any of the meditational deities will show you. The dakini that found me in Nepal is named Vajrayogini, and she is one terrifying woman. Her bright red body is slick in the sun, the sweat, the dust. She dances furiously, joyously on the corpse of the ignorant mind. Around her hips and ankles are strings of pearls or bones that swish and snap as she sways her hips, as she shakes her money-maker.

Her red belly has never born children, but she's known the slick of sex. Her hair flies wildly about her and her crown of fire. Her lips are curled around sharp, pointed teeth, red lipstick running. In the crook of her arm she holds a staff, her male principle, her sun king, the fear of death decapitated and impaled on the staff that bears the bone strung feathers of her inner flame. She carries a knife of cutting wisdom.

In her other hand she holds a skull cup of the elixir of life, ambrosia, blood, the water of the fountain, the stuff of dreams, the two-in-one, the wine. Her name is Vajra, the diamond, the adamantine, the lightning, the merciless, the clear, the compassionate, the precise, Yogini, the woman, the sky dancer, the veiled one, the star and night sky herself, the she. Vajrayogini.

She found me in Nepal and my life since has been to seek to embody the qualities I wish to possess. She is teaching me how to get up and dance.

the modern context

Returning again to this moment, as you are reading this collection of symbols that mean words that mean bigger symbols that are combined to create sentences that are even more complex symbols in the set of symbols that composes the entirety of this writing. You, in your body, right now. How many electrical appliances are either shining on you or making noise at you? How many are doing both?

Now that I have you back here, I wish to quote what Geshe Lhundrup Rigsel said to me when I told him I was sad and angry that I had no women teachers: "You become nun and you teach, then." Seeing my reaction and laughing at me, he said, "I worry about the nuns that go to America and don't come back. In America, Samsara is open twenty-four seven, you know? No time for practice."

It has taken me a long time to realize that Geshe-la was telling me that I needed to make time for myself to practice. If I wanted women teachers, if I wanted to be one, then I needed to make time for being one. We take the context in which Geshe-la understands Buddhism and fast forward a few thousand years and we find you and me. We're huddled around our laptop fire, me writing and you reading, and we're telling each other stories about the old days and about what it feels like to be a human being. We're feeling in this electronic dark for all of our body parts, our heart and mind together in the same place. The world is moving on, the end times are always coming these days, these times they are a-changin'. It is a soldier's war, now. Every day is a melee, and we need to be profoundly in touch with our limbs, with our ground, with our roots and with the sky. Our bodies know how to stay alive, if we just pay attention and let them.

The landscape today looks very different, however, and it changes faster and faster. No one can argue that the staggering evolution of technology has dramatically outpaced our own sense of how sensory perception shapes reality. We are gorged on stimulus. The tremendous increase in proliferation of technology through increasingly integrated media has brought a proportional decrease in the quality of information delivered.

Mainstream media continues to consolidate and measure success by the clumsy, behemoth structures whose behaviors as functioning systems are similar to those found in almost all of our "institutions": educational, medical, spiritual, and governmental. These non-dynamic delivery systems are the natural product of the behavior of such hierarchical beauraucratic structures, a topic which has long been studied by social theorists.

For such mainstream communication structures in our country, they are suffering pangs of obsolescence by virtue of their association with these archaic structures that, in order to exist, must appeal and conceal for the lowest common denominator. In response, a steady informational wave of increasing amplitude has emerged: user-created and user-driven content. This can be seen most easily on the web in sites that are not only challenging but driving the transformation of contemporary media delivery.

These sites feature user-driven content that is self-selected by the users: the quality of the content is determined by the users of the site. If a site can gather a wide enough base of users by consistently enabling the users to rate the content, the messaging of the content becomes self-fulfilling. People will gravitate toward information that reinforces belief systems with which they feel they can identify.

There are many places we can argue the relative merit of the content that most people select to reinforce in their own media consumption. What I would like to offer for consideration is this: the human brain creates consciousness in similar ways. Neural pathways that are frequented often become stronger, easier to travel, more comfortable. Over time those structures that are reinforced grow, and those that are not shut down or die off. A body creates a moment of consciousness by utilizing sensory input to either reinforce, simply use, or contradict neural pathways. Into adulthood, these pathways become more rigid and more difficult to change or compensate for in the event of injury.

Tantra is simply the study of how the body does this process. When the body is observed with a mindful attention, it is possible to identify and understand the pathways used by the brain and body in a moment of consciousness. The functioning of tantra is an open secret in which we are already engaged. Our challenge now is to disrupt harmful feedback loops of sensory perception that encourage obscure thinking and replace them instead with clear, focused, mindful, discriminating attention.

closing

your face is a bunch of clouds shifting

what is it like when you first wake up?

that very first moment of the day, when you first feel your body. what do you feel first? is it your feet, rubbing soft warm dry sheet snake skin toe play? is it warm sunlight red rubyfruit citrus glow on the back of your eyelids? Or is it deep crackle grey tensions along your spinal column? Where is you consciousness when you first wake up in the morning? How do you wake up?

We talk all the time about how we fall asleep. We talk about letting go, descending, deepening. We talk about conking out, nodding off. It is difficult to find the land of Nod these days. Things are odd in the land of Nod these days. We have drugs that can ship you right off to Nod but without the body-case. Your luggage gets lost between here and Nod, and you sleep like a rock. Like a thing that is non-sentient. Sometimes we say sleep like a baby, and sometimes we say sleep like the dead. This pharm kind of sleep is sleep like a rock. Like a thing that can be, but does not do.

Dreams are beautiful. Follow the language and symbolism of sleep and dreams and you will drift off into a twilight, a disembodied somewhere that could also be nowhere and everywhere. Meanings shift and subtly transform based on elements that are the easiest pathway, the lowest common denominator, the water flows back to the source. Nothing is what it seems, life is but a dream within a dream.

But the sleep that is not like rock sleep. The sleep that is like being baby, like being dead. The sleep that is like the cat, constantly at attention, the sleep that has potential, or the sleep that heals. That wonderland of Nod is far too fantastic for passive sleep. If you go to Nod, you must be fresh like a baby, dumb like the Fool, or you must be like the end of the end, the nothing left to lose. If you go to Nod, if you sail away for Singapore, if you follow the white rabbit, if you open the cellar door, if you can see the threshold as you are crossing over, if you climb through the window, if you can keep a sense of the two in one, the Art, if you can tune your instrument not too tight and not too loose, if you can relax and let go, if you can stay present for every moment, well then. This is another matter entirely, and you and I should spend more time together.

eulogy

there was a moment

when I looked in your eyes

and I saw myself at twelve

the honeysuckle fireflies

the bubbles in the evening

the knowing of fingers

and I said

"I will hold on to you

because your vision is great

your potential is endless and

your face is beautiful.

I will hold you because

I wish harm never to come to you."

now I can see that

in letting you go

you are all that I believed,

just more so.

I dedicate these merits so that I might quickly achieve a state of complete awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings.

~ Goddard Embodiment Studies Magazine, 2008